


Time and Again

by DownToTheSea



Category: Guns of the Dawn
Genre: Dancing, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DownToTheSea/pseuds/DownToTheSea
Summary: Emily and Alice attend another ball, though much has changed since the last one.
Relationships: Emily Marshwic/Cristan Northway
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Time and Again

Emily had a fleeting sense of déjà vu as the carriage clattered along. True, their destination was not Deerlings, although since night had already fallen and the countryside was concealed by shadows outside, they might have been going anywhere. But here she was with Alice, on their way to another society ball.

This one, however, was under somewhat more duress. Alice wanted to go; Mary and Emily did not. Alice threatened to go by herself, so Emily had been pressed into chaperone duty. Ostensibly, the reason was that Mary wanted to stay home with Francis, but Emily thought perhaps the recent increase in calls paid to Grammaine by a certain mayor-governor had something to do with it. This was her punishment, she thought wryly.

Stars were twinkling in the early evening sky, and the summer breeze was warm but not overly so. It had been nearly a year since her return from the front, though there were times when it seemed twenty years, and times when it seemed a matter of minutes.

She tugged at her gown. This was one of the few times of late she had been forced to eschew the more practical style of dressing she had assumed, and it was making her claustrophobic. That, combined with the necessary step of leaving her pistol at home, pressed down on her with palpable discomfort.

_ It will only be a few hours,  _ she reminded herself. Fewer, if she had to bodily drag Alice away before she made a complete fool of herself. Her younger sister seemed to be in a rather wild spirit lately, and Emily was not at all sure what she would do.

_ And Cristan will be there.  _ At least, he  _ might _ be there. He had been invited as a (begrudging) matter of course, but at the last moment, a delegation from the Denland government had arrived to inspect their province and ensure everything was going smoothly. “Checking to see if my ledgers are as clean as they were before or if I have become a blundering idiot in their absence and attempted to misappropriate their funds,” Cristan had put it succinctly. (“You  _ have  _ misappropriated funds in the past,” Emily pointed out, to which he replied that he wasn't such a fool as to do it openly enough to be caught out so easily.) As such, he might be kept busy in Chalcaster tonight. Emily hoped that would not be the case. It would be a long, dull night of sitting in a corner and watching Alice like a hawk without his acerbic company. Or worse, someone would recognize her as Emily Marshwic, Hero, and then she would have a crushing swarm of people to fend off from asking her to dance or for her blessing or to tell them about the battles she had fought in or, or, or. They were well-meaning, but overwhelming, and none of them ever seemed to realize it.

Their destination came into view as the carriage turned a bend: a tall, stately manor that looked as if it had stood for hundreds of years and could endure hundreds more.

Somehow, Emily had not expected this seeming return to what passed for normalcy so soon after the war. (She wondered how the lord and lady of the house were even funding this dance, and none of the options she came up with were appealing. She shifted uncomfortably again, and wished for Alice to grow bored quickly so that she might go home as soon as possible.) But she supposed the nobility were eager to forget their losses in the war, and try to go back to their old lifestyle no matter how ill it fit.

More carriages were clogging the drive, so Emily told Grant to wait for them a short distance away. Once she finally escaped she had no wish to delay their departure by having to thread their way amongst the others. She and Alice disembarked and walked the rest of the way. Alice complained the whole time, but she stopped complaining when they reached the grand doors and were admitted.

The great house was just as beautiful inside as it was outside, with a vast high-ceilinged ballroom illuminated with huge chandeliers of candles. (Very ordinary candles, as there were, after all, no more warlocks in Lascanne.) A crowd of people milled about, mostly conversing as the ball had not yet started in earnest. Alice immediately and guiltlessly abandoned Emily to speak with some friends of hers she had spotted on the other side of the room, leaving Emily to her own devices. While she knew a few people here, speaking to most of them would bring a crowd down on her head, so she quietly found a seat by the side of the room.

How had she endured these without something to occupy her hands? she wondered as she sat there looking politely about the room, focusing nowhere and keeping her face obscured. She longed to be  _ doing _ something. Even Alice's conversation was better than nothing.

“Miss Marshwic?” came a voice from her side. “Lieutenant Marshwic?”

Inwardly, she cursed at being recognized. This was  _ not  _ what she would have preferred.

She turned her head with a stilted smile. A handsome young man was standing there, wearing the red and gold uniform that had once been hers. She glanced at his rank insignia.

“Ensign…?”

“Whitmore,” he said, offering his hand. Emily did not take it. “Sidney Whitmore. Your pardon, Lieutenant, but I recognized you from across the room, and I thought – well, I heard a great deal about your actions in the war, and…”

_ Here it comes,  _ Emily thought, restraining a sigh with difficulty.

“I wondered if perhaps you had any advice for this new officer.” The smile he wore was sheepishly charming. For a moment, Emily thought she caught a calculating edge underneath, but as soon as it had come it was gone, leaving her to wonder, unsettled, if she had imagined it.

“Ensign,” she said again, and now took his hand, quickly shaking it before he could lean over to kiss hers. “I am afraid I cannot give you any advice your own tutors will not already have given you.”  _ Perhaps try to avoid pestering people you have never met,  _ she thought rather uncharitably.

“However, I wish you luck in your endeavors.”

“Thank you, Miss Marshwic. I was also wondering…” He had dimples, she noted, and was using them to full effect. He gestured to the orchestra, which had just launched into the first piece of the night. “Would you do me the honor of this dance?”

Emily opened her mouth to say no, then remembered she had no good reason to treat this young man so rudely, and she had after all just been wishing desperately for something to occupy herself with. She forced another smile. “Thank you, Ensign Whitmore.”

As he led her onto the dance floor, she caught herself looking around, searching for Northway.  _ He must have been delayed.  _ If he was coming at all. And where  _ was  _ Alice? She had now melted completely into the crowd, and Emily could not shake a feeling that her younger sister was out getting herself into trouble somewhere.

“Are you looking for someone, Miss Marshwic?” he inquired.

“My sister,” Emily said, as Northway would have been far too difficult to explain. “I seem to have lost sight of her.”

“I am sure, if she is as charming as you, she will not want for company,” Whitmore told her warmly.

_ Charming?  _ All she had done during their brief acquaintance was barely restrain outright rudeness. He either had a low set of standards, or an eye on flattering her.

“Ensign Whitmore,” Emily said, with the tiniest emphasis on his rank, reminding him that she was technically his superior officer, even if she was retired. “I do not wish there to be any misunderstandings. I have enjoyed speaking with you, but I… er…” Here she faltered, because she realized she had no idea of how to go about politely saying what she wanted to say. She wished again, fervently, for Cristan, who never lacked for insidious civility.

But, luckily, Ensign Whitmore seemed to perceive what she was driving at, and only laughed. “You misunderstand me indeed, Lieutenant! Though I am honored, truly, that you consider me worthy of the attempt. However I only wished to speak with you as one soldier to another.”

Though Emily was not quite sure she believed him, he did veer off onto far different tacks after that. They spent the rest of the dance comparing training experiences; she did not mind that so much, though it made her think of Elise, and her heart stung all over again. He also asked her opinion on which posting to seek out if he was allowed a choice, and she gave him what advice she could.

She seemed to be remaining anonymous; no one else had approached her, and she relaxed slightly, even if there was still a current of unease running through her. She put it down to the unfamiliar surroundings and lack of her pistol, and worry over Alice and Northway, whom she could almost see in his office trying to persuade Denland officials he had done nothing wrong. Ironically, it would even be true.  _ Let them believe him, _ she thought.

Ensign Whitmore deposited her on the edge of the room once the dance was done, lifting surprisingly fiery eyes to hers. “I hope to see you again tonight, Miss Marshwic, and perhaps offer you another dance?”

“Perhaps,” Emily said noncommittally, feeling rather as if a small whirlwind had just sucked her up and spat her out. She strode away from Whitmore without offering a curtsey. Alice, she thought, would  _ greatly  _ enjoy his company.

As if thinking so had summoned her, Alice cannonballed out of the crowd. “Emily!” she hissed, and there was that wicked gleam in her eyes again. Emily's heart sank.

But Alice only said, “Who were you dancing with just now? What an extraordinarily handsome man, and in the red and the gold, too!”

Before Emily could answer, another voice cut in smoothly. “Miss Marshwic.”

This one was familiar and welcome, and a smile had already formed on her lips before she turned around.

Cristan Northway straightened from his bow, and Emily did not need to think before taking his hand. His eyes rested on hers, for a moment almost as if no one else in the manor even existed, and they were the only two people in the world, alone under the strengthening stars.

Alice made a noise that sounded suspiciously like “ugh” and the moment was nicely ruined.

“I am glad to see you here, Mr. Northway,” Emily said. “I presume the Denlanders found no fault?”

“None yet. They return tomorrow to put my books through their paces again, but I have wrested this night free to join you, Emily.”

“Hmph,” said Alice.

Northway's smile tightened somewhat, and he turned to Alice, inclining his head. “And Miss Marshwic the younger. Good evening.”

“It has taken a turn for the worse,” Alice said with what she clearly thought was chilly regality. She turned to Emily, doing her very best to ignore Mr. Northway. “Can you believe that I have not been asked to dance even once?”

“You know there is still a dearth of gentlemen, Alice.”

“Indeed.” Alice cast Northway a sour look, as if he had personally gone about the country and murdered all the young men expressly so that they would not dance with her.

Blessedly, the orchestra struck up again before Emily could say something she would regret later, and Northway offered her his hand.

“May I, Emily?”

She slid her hand into his, and, ignoring Alice's outraged intake of breath, stepped out onto the floor with him.

“She seems to be in fine form tonight,” Northway said. His eyes still flickered down more often than most others, and there was a line of concentration running across his forehead, but Emily could say with some confidence that he had improved considerably under her tutelage.

She passed to another gentleman before returning to Northway. “I am a little concerned about her,” she admitted in a low voice. “She has been acting strangely, these past weeks.”

Northway glanced over at where Alice danced with another young soldier before hurriedly returning his attention to where he was stepping. “Have you any theories?”

Emily shook her head. “I only hope she does not run off again.”

“She does not appear likely to run away at present,” Northway said drily, and as Emily turned through the dance she saw what he had; Alice with her hand pressed to Ensign Whitmore’s and looking positively enamored.

Under her breath, Emily muttered something that was not at all appropriate for such a fine occasion, and next to her Northway let out a strangled choking noise that might have been a muffled laugh.

She danced three times in a row with Cristan, neither particularly concerned with how so obviously favoring each other appeared to anyone else. Then a very high-spirited reel began, and a look of faint alarm shot through his eyes. Laughing, Emily excused him from attempting this one lest he trip and break something, and he bowed out to the side of the room. Emily was asked to dance by another soldier, this one a rather stodgy but good-humored fellow who much to her relief had not the slightest idea who she was. By the time it was done, Emily had had quite enough of dancing for a while, and went back to her corner of the room.

Then she swore under her breath again, for Ensign Whitmore was there conversing with Alice, and Northway was sitting by making up an awkward and mostly-excluded third. She aimed for the chair nearest him, but Whitmore intercepted her.

“Miss Marshwic,” he began, all easy smiles again. “I am pleased to inform you I have had the delight of making your sister's acquaintance. You are a charming family indeed.”

Emily had a great silent struggle to keep her eyebrows from shooting up. “Thank you, Ensign Whitmore.” She smiled at him and tried to step around him, but he matched her movement.

“She has told me of your lovely grounds at Grammaine. I hope one day fate allows me to visit them in person, so that I might see their beauty for myself.”

“I am sure we would be glad of your company,” Emily said with strained politeness.

He kept pace with her, blocking her from catching Northway's eyes. Emily took a step back, meaning to bypass him in a wider circle, but she was unused to wearing long skirts after all this time and her foot caught in her dress. Gritting her teeth, she stood rooted to the spot, since it was that or fall over.

“I was wondering if you would do me the great honor of another dance?”

Emily had just opened her mouth to either decline politely or tell him to go to hell (she was inclined towards the latter option in her current mood), when he leaned just a little closer and his breath washed over her, warm and humid.

It was like someone was pressing a cloth over Emily's face. The air cleared instantly, but in that moment her throat seemed to close up. The heat and moisture were in her lungs, dragging her down, and her skirts twisted about her suddenly sweating ankles were rotting roots in knee-deep water, and –

“Forgive me,” said Cristan, appearing at her side. His voice, like sharpened ice, cut through the haze. “I am afraid Miss Marshwic has already promised this dance to me.”

She had, of course, done nothing of the sort, but the calming frost spread over her and she felt her composure return somewhat. Cristan took her arm and she leaned inconspicuously on him while she untangled her feet. She barely felt herself moving as they left Alice and Whitmore behind.

This was a slow piece, thankfully, but Emily could hardly force her legs to cooperate. The strains of the music pierced her, and the whirling couples seemed to generate their own heat, the thrum of conversation and laughter building up until it threatened to crush her beneath it. She balked when it came time to let go of Cristan and move to a different partner, and they came to an awkward lurching halt in the middle of the floor. Eyes turned curiously towards them.

Cristan saw it in her face. “Emily,” he said in a low voice.

Her fingers bit into his arm, but she could not force any words out. He looked around, narrowing his eyes, before he turned to momentarily shield her from view.

“Why, I am sorry!” he exclaimed loudly, managing to sound even more oily than usual. “How terribly clumsy of me, madam. Truly, I must do better to look where I tread next time…” He took her arm once more and towed her away from the dancers, to the side of the room away from Alice and Whitmore. And, she noticed, not mentioning her name out loud.

She sat down in the first chair they ran into, and he knelt next to her. “Tell me what you need, Emily.”

“Out,” she said, concentrating on trying to breathe. “Get me out of here.”

He glanced around, waiting until there was no more attention on them, before he took her hand and helped her up, winding her arm through his again and making a direct course for the nearest exit: a high set of windows that stood open and allowed the guests to go out and take the air. There was no one outside yet, though, and they slipped through without anyone noticing or following.

Northway released her as soon as they were outside, drawing back and giving her space as he closed the windows surreptitiously, blocking out the noise from the ballroom.

Emily stumbled to the railing, clutching it and heaving in a huge, grateful breath of fresh air. It was a cool night, now that the sun had gone down, and she could feel the heat rushing away from her. She gasped in breath until her head was light and she was swaying on her feet, but it felt so good to have air flooding her lungs once more.

“Better?” Northway inquired, leaning on the railing a few feet away.

Emily nodded. Her knuckles were white where she clutched the railing. “Thank you, Cristan.”

“It is my privilege, Emily, to provide you with whatever you require whenever possible.” His eyes softened. “Would you like to leave? You could take my carriage and send it back, so that your man Grant is still here for your sister.”

“No… Thank you, but no. I cannot leave Alice alone.” She made a poor attempt at a smile. “A fine chaperone I would be, to run off at the first glimpse of a young gentleman showing interest in her.”

“Her?” His mouth quirked. “Emily, I rather thought it was you the ensign was truly interested in.”

He covered it admirably, but a sort of sadness laced his tone; even now, he still thought she would grow to regret him.

“Regardless, I cannot abandon my sister. No matter how much I might wish to,” Emily slid her hand across the railing to him. “Let us stay out here for a little while, together. And then I shall go back in, though I face a horde of young men after my sister.”

Northway smiled, some of the sadness melting away, and his hand met hers.

**Author's Note:**

> Am I ever going to stop ending fics with these two holding hands? Sources suggest no. I originally planned follow-up parts going into more detail about what's going on with Alice and the not-so-charming Ensign Whitmore, but my friend just got done reading Guns of the Dawn and watching her liveblog it got me emo about Emily and Northway again, haha, so I decided to just publish this as a stand-alone piece. There may be a sequel in future, though!
> 
> Title is from the song Time and Again by the Seekers. As always, please let me know if I screwed anything related to Emily's PTSD up. Thank you for reading! <3


End file.
